Sort out your phone notifications
I recently went to a funeral. The entire ceremony was interrupted by phones going off, beeps here, buzzes there. I looked around and everyone just kept checking their phone. Every single mourner, the priest, and to my horror — even the deceased was looking at their phone.
Now, while that story isn't true, it is completely believable — which is enough to illustrate how bad the situation has become.
Take back time, attention, and a modicum of agency from our techno overlords. Sort out your phone notifications.
How to sort out phone notifications
We can sort notifications into three categories:
Time sensitive Notifications we might want to get right away — messages from significant people, food delivery updates, tornado warnings.
Time insensitive Probably the majority of notifications you receive are not time sensitive — promotions for pizza, someone liking a thing you did, news blasts about global events you are unlikely to be able to solve right this minute.
Totally unwanted These are notifications we don't want at all — messages from strangers, a friend requesting you to acknowledge their achievements in candy crush, multinational corporations telling you they miss you.
Go to the settings on your phone — for each app you can adjust your preferences for the notifications.
If the app only sends time sensitive notifications — then you can leave that on the default setting. This is called
Immediate
on iOS.If the app only sends time insensitive notification but you still want to receive them you can set them to appear in your
Scheduled Summary
on iOS. (more on this below)If the app only sends totally unwanted notifications, simply switch off the notifications. Goodbye.
If the app sends various types of notifications—some important, some not—then it's worth checking the settings for that individual app as it may allow you to switch off the unwanted ones.
What is Scheduled Summary?
Scheduled Summary
is a feature on iOS devices. It allows you to receive notifications in one batch at a specified time each day. This prevents you from being continuously interrupted.
Unfortunately, this feature is not available on Android phones. So, the next best thing you can do is set time insensitive notifications for chosen apps to silent
. They'll still appear in your notifications, but they wont interrupt you.
How to set up scheduled summary on iOS?
- Open the
Settings
app - Navigate to
Notifications
- Select
Scheduled Summary
- Choose a time for your
Scheduled Summary
- Enjoy the silence